No. 283
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 01, 2015

Her Last Quadrille.

The bursting of an artery due to tight lacing causes the death of Miss Mary Crawford of Detroit, Mic
December 1, 2015
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  [Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Absolutely Pure. | Fierce Football.

Her Last Quadrille.

Her Last Quadrille

The bursting of an artery due to tight lacing causes the death of Miss Mary Crawford of Detroit, Mich. 

The craze for slender waists found a victim Saturday night at Detroit, Mich., in Miss Mary Crawford, who was attending a dance. In the midst of the quadrille she suddenly cried and fell, but was caught by her partner, who carried her to a lounge, where she seemingly fainted. It was found impossible to resuscitate her, and a physician was summoned who pronounced the young lady dead. An examination revealed the fact that she had died from tight lacing, the stays in her corsets having been drawn so tightly that her flesh lay in folds beneath, so that the exertion of dancing caused the bursting of a blood vessel. Miss Crawford was to have been married today, and her betrothed is completely prostrated.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, October 6, 1888.